


It made you feel so alone

by thegrumblingirl



Series: Dishonored prompts [5]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Not Canon Compliant, Terminal Illnesses, Unrequited, Voidsickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 02:57:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15963236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: There’s a line to be drawn, leading from the past to the present. It’s not a straight line. It twists and turns and winds itself around the hands of fate; and just whose hands they are is anybody’s guess. It starts with an unpayable debt that time will do its best to collect.





	It made you feel so alone

**Author's Note:**

> based on prompt 19 from [this list](https://screwtheprinceimtakingthehorse.tumblr.com/post/177704086980/angstfluff-prompt-list): “How are you feeling today?”
> 
> it... took a turn.
> 
> soundtrack: [Kettering, by The Antlers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8We0FVflGaU).

There’s a line to be drawn, leading from the past to the present. It’s not a straight line. It twists and turns and winds itself around the hands of fate; and just whose hands they are is anybody’s guess. It starts with an unpayable debt that time will do its best to collect.

It starts the minute Daud stilled the Empress’s heart.

It starts the minute Corvo holds that heart in his hands; hands still dirty with the grime of Coldridge no matter how hard he scrubbed.

It starts the minute Corvo’s life is forfeit to the Void.

Daud doesn’t know how they found him, and although it should matter — it does matter — he stops wondering when he fully comprehends the letter. Signed by the Empress herself, the new and old; Emily Kaldwin is _asking him_ to return to Dunwall at the first opportunity. When Billie arrives on his doorstep two days after the letter, when no reply has been forthcoming, he understands how. He still doesn’t understand why.

Attano’s sick, the letter reads. When Delilah usurped the throne, she took something from him — his mark, his magic. Or so they thought. Once Emily’s freed her empire and her father, freed _Daud_ from where he’d been tucked away just out of reach in Morley, she brings with her own indelible scars. Who’s a heretic now, he thinks, and wants to drive a knife through the back of his hand.

Emily sought to heal her father. His imprisonment during Delilah’s reign left him weak and pale; but there’s something still there of the old spark. Something in his eyes, in his dreams. She finds him whalebone with the right mark, runes that hiss and sing with fever that runs hotter than Attano’s; hot enough to burn it out of him.

It doesn’t work.

And now, Daud’s their last hope, their last connection to the Void that’s older than theirs taken together. And besides. His mother was a witch, after all, wasn’t she?

Billie’s eyes give nothing away. Daud agrees.

When he sees Emily for the first time in fifteen years, she doesn’t clap him in irons. She looks at him the way orphans do, then takes him to see her father.

He doesn’t believe Emily when she says that his sickness has made Attano a different man.

Spending time with him feels as though he’s been caught in a storm; one of those the Royal Protector could once summon to his hand with the mere flick of a wrist. But instead of ripping apart the world as he wants to, it’s all set into his bones, deep into the marrow.

Daud tries, he does. He’s brought what of his mother’s teachings he remembers; research, whatever Billie had left from Emily’s foray into the Royal Conservatory. He’ll stay a month, he says. It’s as long as any of this can be kept a secret.

When the month is up, he agrees to another fortnight. And another. Hypatia arrives from Addermire. She acts frightened of him because it’s the done thing, not because she is.

“How are you feeling today?” It’s not even a real question anymore, at this point. The answer rarely varies. “They say a smile’s never killed anyone. Who knows, perhaps you’re lucky.” Daud turns to gallows’ humour, something that Corvo’s long past.

Corvo, when he speaks, wants Daud to leave because he’s wasting his time. Both of their time.

Daud stays. He’s not leaving — he knows he should. Instead, he stays up nights, reading even Sokolov’s meandering nonsense. Witches’ spells, books written by people so obsessed with the Void they wanted to become one with it. Instead, he reads to Corvo. He helps him assess candidates for the positions of Royal Protector and Spymaster when the public eventually has to be told that the Empress’ father is ill. When it has to be told he’s unlikely to recover.

Daud is the last to hold out hope. Eventually, he loses.

When Emily weeps over her father's final breaths, Daud keeps to the shadows. At the funeral, he watches Jameson adapt to his new duties. When Emily asks him to stay, just another week, just another fortnight, he agrees out of some forgotten deference. He stays until the headstone is added to the gazebo. He doesn’t have another sword to lay down. A rose from the gardens will do.

When he finally leaves, it's without a word goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SO SORRY


End file.
